Natural ventilation and acoustic comfort

Anthony Chilton , Pedro Novo , Neil Mcbride , Arthur Lewis-Nunes , Innes Johnston , James Rene

Natural ventilation offers the potential for a sustainable, low-energy, low-maintenance solution to providing air to building occupants. When compared to mechanical ventilation systems, it also gives the benefits that occupants feel more connected with the outside world and perceive that they have better control over their environment. These are both factors that improve comfort and well-being. However, natural ventilation relies on larger openings in the façade which can create problems with the ingress of external noise that adversely affects occupant comfort. An overview is given as to how these conflicting issues can be resolved in the design process and several case studies making use of acoustically attenuated natural ventilation are presented. A methodology is proposed for comparing different attenuated ventilation elements using a quantitative rating based on a combination of both their aerodynamic and acoustic performance.

Mots clés: natural ventilation; sustainable design

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Anthony Chilton, Pedro Novo, Neil Mcbride, Arthur Lewis-Nunes, Innes Johnston, et al.. Natural ventilation and acoustic comfort. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810623⟩